The internet is full of articles and video from today’s Senate testimony regarding gun violence. I can’t read them or watch them anymore. One after another the witnesses, both sane and insane, revealed what is wrong with America at the depths of its core: the conservative-liberal schism; our propensity for violence in general and guns in particular; our devaluing of human life, especially that of women and children; the total loss of common sense within our collective polity; our willingness to stage these hypocritical kabuki charades in our legislative chambers, even as people are being murdered outside.
In today’s case it was beyond absurd: at the very same time that Gabby Giffords, herself a former congressional legislator from Arizona, was testifying with halting speech, the result of brain damage from a near fatal gun attack, three people were critically wounded, one fatally, in a multiple shooting in her home state.
I, for one, can no longer take it. It is symbolic of a country that has lost its bearing – morally, ethically, spiritually and in every other way.
I am typically the most optimistic person you’ll ever meet. No longer. The United States of America is certainly no longer “united,” and its “state” is now one of terminal pathological absurdity.
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JOHN LUNDIN (www.JohnLundin.com) is a self-described “spiritual agitator” and the author of THE NEW MANDALA – Eastern Wisdom for Western Living, written in collaboration with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
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I am so sad and ashamed. I identify with this writer’s former optimism. I still have hope, but am just disheartened.